Desire

Universal / SRC; 2007

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Pharoahe Monch has a stunning hip-hop pedigree. The Queens-born MC went to high school with Mobb Deep's Havoc and Prodigy, founded the seminal Organized Konfusion with Prince Po, and ghostwrote for Diddy on Press Play. But the brain-bending lyricist remains best known for a quartet of laddering synth bleats (the uncleared Godzilla sample from "Simon Says" that got his debut solo album, Internal Affairs, pulled from shelves) and a command to "get the fuck up" so irrefutable in that "how the fuck up?" was the only possible response.

This sort of deft reversal characterizes Monch's lyrics ("Slave to a label, but I still own my masters," he spits on the title track), as does an existential and oblique approach to well-worn gunplay scenarios. Vocally, he's like a Yankee Ludacris, except that he peppers his durable, booming vernacular with showy clusters of tongue-twisting homophones. And like Nas in his prime, Monch combines several skill sets into a seamless package: A vivid narrative imagination and the control to bring it to life, a knack for dizzying extended metaphors and haymaker punchlines, and a complex moral sense.

Any given track on Desire displays one or two of these attributes-- "Let's Go" sustains a rhyme scheme built around the names of various handheld peripherals; the braggadocio-driven title track is full of wild puns like "even if you were ashes you couldn't "urn"-- but the best embody them all. In the epic, revenge-fantasy closer "Trilogy", a chorus comprised of Mr. Porter (in the funky first act), Dwele (in the elegiac second), and Tone (in the boom-bap third) provides narrative compression and interior monologue. "Trilogy"'s fantastic pacing and its use of music as a storytelling supplement only adds to its high-wire tension.

Monch might flounder into familiar indie territory if his music weren't so lucid and lively. He gives his backup singers and shapeshifting beats plenty of room to breathe, especially on the tracks he produced himself. On the anthemic "Push", he drops in for one climatic verse after a long gospel workout moistened by Tower of Power horns, and on "Body Baby", he forgoes his usual boom in favor of brisk syllabic shards that slot neatly into the music's juke-joint bounce. Producers like 99 Fingaz, Alchemist, and Detroit up-and-comer Black Milk give Monch the kind of extraterrestrial soul he's built for. The only duds are the genre exercises: The maddeningly insistent guitar noodles during the Public Enemy throwback "Welcome to the Terrordome" are a long way from the Bomb Squad's Prince-sampled shredding, while the disposable "Bar Tap" shows that club tracks aren't one of Monch's strong suits.

Monch also handled production on "What it Is", where conspiratorial whispers and an urgent synth monotone make the thread of paranoia running through the record sonically explicit. This conspiratorial bent, combined with the album's interludes (which range from civil-rights polemics, meditations on telekinesis, and a satire of Clear Channel-controlled FM radio), give it a recondite feel. Yet Monch's fantastical side is tempered by hyper-modern references to the Iraq war, stem cell research, Hurricane Katrina, and, in a clear moment of weakness, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. His penchant for working hot-button topics into his rhyme schemes is so pronounced that you almost expect to hear about troop surges and colony collapse.

The long wait for Desire is due largely to the Rawkus/Geffen debacle, and Monch isn't happy about it-- as on Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury, his frustration with being stuck in label-purgatory is apparent in pockets of the album. The first time he speaks, on the whammy-barred screed "Push", it's to liken the rap industry, with its "choruses of cocaine, tales of black heat," to indentured servitude. "Now switch that advance for your emancipation!" This angry-prole stance pervades the album; Monch seems more concerned about labels fucking with his personal agency than his money. He doesn't take pride in wealth like cocaine rappers, nor does he take pride in poverty like their undie foils-- he seems more interested in specific self-definition than on picking a side in rap's culture war. At a time when a thread of unquestioning capitalist acquiescence runs through an otherwise lively and diverse rap climate, Monch's embattled anarchism isn't just refreshing, it's inspiring.